


public display of affection

by taylorswift



Category: Actor RPF, Marvel Cinematic Universe RPF
Genre: And by pay I mean he'll separate them entirely so he doesn't have to deal with this shit, Canon Compliant, F/M, Filming, I tried to rein it in this time around so we'll see how that works out, Inspired by Real Events, Jeremy Renner said so y'all I don't make the rules, Joss Whedon does not have time for kinks on his set, Joss Whedon will make them pay for this later, Me writing canon compliant rennerson wow I truly am on crack, Mild Sexual Content, On Set, Reddit Made Me Do It, Scarlett is a Tease, Sexual Tension, Sponsored by Advil, Stripping, Takes place during Avengers filming, Unresolved Sexual Tension
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-17
Updated: 2019-07-17
Packaged: 2020-06-29 10:22:46
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,237
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19828168
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/taylorswift/pseuds/taylorswift
Summary: It's a game, and the first one to break rank loses.ORwhat happened in the off-camera moments during avengers.





	public display of affection

**Author's Note:**

> ...so, hi, you can all go and direct your blame at none other than jeremy lee renner for this one (jeremy i know you're reading this so hi, have fun at sdcc this weekend). i'm a fake fan and found his AMA for reddit during KTM press a few months ago; there was one particular question that he gave an answer to that shook my whole fucking world and i knew instantly what i had to do. this is my service to you all. you are welcome. rennerson rights today and always, babes. also, let's remember that i am a fic writer, not an a-list actor/someone who regularly sees the ins and outs of filming a movie. i'm working with what i've fucking got. creative liberties, people. 
> 
> feedback keeps the lights on — thank you guys for legit being the coolest people ever, the bookmarks and the kudos and the comments and whatever other forms of love i'm neglecting to mention put the biggest smile on my face. title comes from britney spears' "gimme more". come find me on twitter @emswifts and instagram @strrlights, where we talk crackhead theories until four in the morning. happy reading xx

Playing with fire was something Jeremy did regularly. He was just a man, after all: hot blooded with a real pension for stumbling into the arms of trouble any time it pricked his radar at the twenty-mile radius. He liked the feel of an open flame kissing his fingertips, enjoyed the heat on his face and the way his heart fought with a little more gusto to escape the cage of bone in his chest every time he toed the line. It was a fucking game to him, a game that was never the same twice and a game he always won.

He’d never had an opponent like Scarlett before, though. With her, he wasn’t just toying around with a lighter. He was letting a goddamn inferno sweep through his front door with an invitation to wreak chaos as it desired.

Scarlett Johansson was a lot of things. She was the first to arrive to set and the last to leave, she had sides and sticky notes and highlighters in her on-set bag even if her only mention in them was a part of a background shot, she could clear through an entire row of shots without it fazing her, she knew exactly how to keep in rhythm with the boys in a way that didn’t feel forced; she was smart and funny and charming and incredibly talented. On top of it all, she was sex on legs, and being _just a man_ meant that sometimes, working with her and her alone threatened to drive him out of his fucking mind.

The problem wasn’t that she was sex on legs. He knew how to put a lid on it, contain himself – he wasn’t completely stupid – and keep his line of sight eye-level. His mama hadn’t raised a fucking caveman. The problem was that she knew it and it was as though she got off on rubbing it in his face.

There was a spark between them and she liked making friction. It came along in the form of little comments that were way too loaded to be as innocent as she swore they were, looks at the wrong time paired with a smug smirk or a raise eyebrow, occasionally brushing up against him and letting her hands off-leash. If she wanted to play, that was fine. He could fight fire and mess with her just as easy as she could.

Game on, he thought. Game _fucking_ on.

It was mostly kept hovering around the TV-14 rating, solely due to the fact they were living on a trigger with Joss and it would be the slightest of things that caused him to fall off the cliff. He’d make his innuendos, unabashedly flirt with her – and yeah, when she wore the catsuit, he’d let his eyes linger over her just a second longer than he normally would so he knew she knew what he was doing. Joss was openly annoyed by it, but he was openly annoyed by most things occurring on his set: the ongoing debate over which Chris was superior (both participants of said debate named Chris), blueberries being used as projectiles, people coming to set trying to pretend they weren’t nursing hangovers, unapproved line and wardrobe and blocking changes finding their way into a shot, how six grown adults could be the equivalent of an entire army of six-year-olds hyped up on sugar. It seemed like Jeremy and Scarlett flirting bothered him the most. Jeremy figured any day now, he’d walk onto set and be presented with a contract stating he wouldn’t allude to, make reference of, or actually sleep with Scarlett until after his Marvel contract expired or he died, whichever should come first.

He and Scarlett hadn’t slept together – to Jeremy, that was the stamp of ‘game over’ and he was having much too fun stirring the nest under Scarlett’s skin to do that. Plus, he got the impression that sleeping with her wouldn’t happen any time in this century, and he wasn’t the type for wishful thinking. He was also seventy percent positive she was still sending nudes to Sean Penn, even if she swore up and down and on the Bible they had broken up (and that the man’s phone was a half-step above a Nokia). He was content to make his jokes and get her to blush so badly before a take that it wouldn’t go away in time and then tuck it in when he went back to his rental house for the night.

It didn't stop his mind from wandering every now and again. In some foreign culture, what he was doing could probably be interpreted as an obscure form of foreplay.

There were three places where they really liked to strike the match: on set, in the stunt gym, and in the hair and makeup trailers. All were usually situations where neither of them could avoid the other, and other people (varied in number) were around and subject to them and their antics. Personally, Jeremy _really_ liked to wait until the cameras were rolling because that was when she’d get exceptionally heated, but he’d take a tech rehearsal.

Despite the majority of his scenes in this film being ones shared with Scarlett, they didn’t really film much with each other. It was mostly them grueling their asses off in the gym. The infirmary scene between their characters required rehearsal beyond just stunt blocking, meaning the rest of his afternoon was squared off quite nicely.

“Nice of you to join us,” she drawled sarcastically, looking down from her sides to watch him saunter onto set.

He shot her a brilliant smile. “You saying you missed me, darlin’? That’s sweet.”

Scarlett rolled her eyes, the slight shake of her head sending red curls out of her ponytail and falling down around the frame of her face. Tech rehearsals meant that they got to dress down, a blessing and a curse tangled in one; a blessing because it meant he didn’t have to face the girl in wardrobe who had a crush on him, a curse because it meant Scarlett didn’t have to wear her catsuit. “You wish, old man.”

From somewhere outside of Jeremy’s peripheral vision – what could he say? It was hard to see anybody but her when she was around – someone that sounded a whole lot like Joss groaned. “Okay, children. It’s time to work. You hear me? _Work_.”

“What, things didn’t go as planned earlier with the Asgardians?”

Another groan. “Please don’t say that word.”

“Which one?” Jeremy piped up. “She said, like, ten.”

If looks could kill, Jeremy and Scarlett both would have knives wedged through their windpipes. “I have a headache,” Joss lamented. “So please. Do what I hired you to do and prove to me this was not a mistake.”

“Might be a little late for that.”

“A little?”

Joss did a sweeping glance around the set. “Anyone have an Advil?”

Advil wasn’t something that would deliver Joss from the evil that was a tech rehearsal. Tech rehearsals meant that they’d be delivering the same lines over and over again, lucky if they could wade through two or three lines of dialogue before someone yelled out for them to stop while they fixed or debated something. It was an early tech rehearsal, too, meaning they were still a solid week out from seeing this scene on the shooting lineup and Joss had a pencil tucked in his ear ready to make any and all changes to the script he saw necessary. At least he got to do it from the comfort of his sweatpants and sitting on a bed.

“Can we see what it’s gonna look like with him actually restrained?” Joss asked no one in particular, in reference to Jeremy.

A crew member scuffled onto the set at the mere suggestion, motioning for Jeremy to put his wrists by his sides so they could loop them through the prop restraints. “Oh, it’s okay,” he insisted. “Scarlett prefers to be the one doin’ all that to me.”

The view of Scarlett sitting on the tiny bench across from him was mostly obscured by the hunched down crew member, but it was impossible to miss the scoff flying from her throat as her jaw dropped. Sure, it was a slight knock at himself, but _anything to get a reaction out of her_ – it was worth it and then some.

“Excuse him,” Scarlett apologized dryly, cutting her eyes over to Jeremy. “Usually he’s gagged by the time the handcuffs go on.”

“Sorry, mistress.” He shot her an exaggerated wink as the crew member threaded the restraints around his wrists. “You gonna punish me for it later?”

Scarlett’s eyes were glittering with malice. “I’m going to murder you later.”

“And then I’ll bury both of your bodies somewhere in the desert where no one will find you,” Joss interrupted, tuned back in to the conversation beyond dialogue discrepancies and potential angles for the shot. “I’ll pay you to nix the dirty talk once and for all.”

“You’re already paying us, boss,” Jeremy pointed out innocently.

“From. The top.”

Jeremy thrashed around against cuffs that were barely sitting on his wrist for a couple of minutes at the request of Joss and pretended to doze off while Joss, Scarlett, and a seemingly random PA brainstormed as to what Natasha should say after Clint’s “I gotta flush him out line” since whatever it was that she was currently muttering to him wasn’t doing the trick. They blocked out Scarlett’s movements from her bench to the tray table to his bedside and to the door, Jeremy happy that his only movements were swinging his legs around so his feet could touch the floor.

Every time Scarlett-as-Natasha uncuffed him, they would insist upon her re-cuffing him whenever they called for a stop and had them reset. After his comment to one of the crew members, it seemed like Scarlett was purposefully seeking out a way to get him back for it. It was hard using his own ammo against him, though. Didn’t pack the punch he knew she was looking for, and she was growing irritated that she hadn’t yet made a dent in wiping that shit-eating grin off his face.

“You wanna take this somewhere later?” he asked as indifferently as he could while she strapped him back to the bed. “I know that seeing me cuffed up gets you all hot and bothered under your collar.”

Her head shot up; the glare she directed his way was heated enough to set him on fire in the not-so-fun-way right where he fucking sat. “Shut up.”

“Not my fault you didn’t bring the gag.”

“I am going to kink-shame you into fuckin’ oblivion,” she avowed between her gritted teeth. “Or just kick your ass into it. Whichever chance I get first.”

“Good luck with that, sweetheart.”

Her face drew up into an overly saccharine smile, nose scrunched up. “Thanks, _honey._ ”

“Hey! Kids! Remember that thing called a movie? We’re trying to make one here, whenever you two are done with your nauseating flirting.”

Scarlett was quick to clarify that they were “absolutely _not_ flirting” at the same time Jeremy said, “I didn’t know we were filming a porno; guess it explains the bed and cuffs.” The words barely got off his lips before Scarlett backhanded him directly in the chest.

He couldn’t block the hit even if he had seen it coming – his hands currently wrapped in cuffs conveniently prevented that. “Ow! Jesus, woman!”

“Scarlett,” Joss said wearily. “You are my new favorite. Whatever you want, you get. Want a new partner for this scene? Done.”

“Getting rid of him won’t work. He’s like herpes. He’ll just come back after you get him to go away.”

“Are you speaking from experience, J?”

“Everybody! Stop talking about sex!” Joss pinched the bridge of his nose, exhaling shallowly. “Start the scene from the top again before you people give me an aneurysm.”

They rewound once again, starting from the beginning of the scene to test Scarlett’s new line and see how the blocking looked on the monitors. Jeremy flopped around on the bed like a fish, Scarlett unhooked his restraints and they exchanged some lines about being unmade. Scarlett got up from the bed, stalking over to the opposite end of the tiny room where the door was at. Joss was over in his chair, muttering about how he didn’t like the full shots with both of them as they talked about Loki and wanted alternating close-ups on them. 

“We gotta stop him,” Scarlett-as-Natasha said, Jeremy-as-Clint shaking his head in response as he swung his legs over the edge of the bed.

“Yeah? Who’s we?”

“I don’t know.” Scarlett-as-Natasha spun back around on her heel to face him. “Whoever’s left.”

“Okay,” Joss was saying off to the side, paying attention to everything but his actors. “Then we switch back to Jeremy. Scarlett off-camera.”

Jeremy-as-Clint gave a curt nod, his eyesight shifting down to the floor for a brief moment. “Well,” he started, the motion from out of the corner of his eye distracting him. Scarlett-as-Natasha didn’t have any blocking until after he gave the rest of his line.

He glanced back up, just in time to see Scarlett ripping her shirt over her head and throwing it to the floor.

The rest of his line completely died in his throat.

He knew this move. He wasn’t a stranger to it – trying to distract someone during an off-camera shot was practically an initiation prank on any movie. He had seen it done from the wings of a set or from a literal off-camera shot, but it never veered into this territory. It was never ‘let’s take off our top and reveal what we are or aren’t (in Scarlett’s case, _aren’t_ ) wearing’ because that asked for trouble. 

Scarlett Johansson, on the other hand, was fucking roommates with trouble and kept it on speed dial.

Two seconds or two minutes could have passed – he didn’t know, his brain was officially shot – Jeremy’s jaw somewhere on the floor as Scarlett looked at him expectantly, an eyebrow quirked almost as if to let him know she was waiting for him to say the rest of his line so they could continue. Like it was just another fucking day at the office, like she wasn’t standing in front of him wearing nothing but her low-slung shorts, and _god, was that the top of her underwear peeking out—_

“Jeremy, what are you waiting on?” Joss then realized what was transpiring and nearly smacked himself in the face with his script in order to shield his eyes. “Jesus fucking Christ, Johansson!”

Scarlett began to laugh, because of course it was nothing more than a good laugh to her. “Sorry boss,” she said without a single shred of regret in her voice. “Gotta keep the old man over there looking alive.”

“Put your shirt back on!” Joss all but yelled at her.

Somewhere off in a universe far, far away from the one his mind was currently floating in, Jeremy found his voice and yanked it back into his throat. “Let the woman do the scene topless if it’s what she really wants. You said whatever she wants, right?”

“Fired. You’re all fucking _fired_.”

After that, Joss dismissed his actors for a five-minute break so those of them interested in actually working on a film could get things set up. Scarlett slipped her shirt back on, tugging the hem down as far as it would go. “You’re the devil, woman,” Jeremy grumbled as they walked off the set and went in search of one of the crafty tables that were usually stationed around the soundstage.

“Me? I’m the devil?” Scarlett feigned surprise. “That doesn’t sound right.”

He reached out, shoving her playfully in the shoulder. She took a few large steps off to the side, pretending to be knocked off balance by the movement before skipping right back to his side. “My comments were harmless next to your little stunt back there,” he continued.

They stopped in front of the fold-out table craft services had set up an express station on, Scarlett shooting him a look over her shoulder. “Did it distract you?”

He spluttered, quickly trying to mask it as a cough. “What the fuck do you think, hot sauce?”

Scarlett’s lips curled back into a downright predatory smile before she went back to pouring herself a cup of water from the pitcher. “Then my plan was successful.”

“Your plan was demonic.”

“Don’t act like you didn’t enjoy the view, Renner.”

When she spun back around, it took no time at all for her eyes to snap straight to his. Her green eyes were dark, as if behind them her mind was spinning a thousand different webs she could trap him in before eating him alive as her dessert. Part of him would’ve dropped straight to his knees and gladly let her have her filthy way with him right then and there. _Of course_ he enjoyed the view, he wanted to bite back. Who the fuck did she think he was? A monk? What else did she want to pry out of him with a pair of pliers? That he would like nothing more than to rip all her clothes off and fuck her until she forgot her name? She didn’t need him to verbalize it – he had a strong feeling she knew anyways and he couldn’t force her to believe otherwise.

If messing with her was like playing with fire, then he was currently gulping down the smoke and admiring the way her flames lit his skin. He’d burn at the fucking stake for her, and he’d sure as hell accept a defeat if that was what it took to get her back on a mattress and her body underneath him.

He settled with shaking his head at her, trying to remain impassive so she wouldn’t get the satisfaction of knowing she had his mind going seventy down a dead-end road. “You’ll be the death of me, Johansson.”

She took a step closer to him, close enough that if he really felt like pushing his luck, he could grab her hips without even trying and pull her flush against him, steer her into some obscure corner and up against a set wall where he’d kiss that smug grin right off her fucking face. He stayed perfectly still – a patience passed down by some saint taking pity on him – when she leaned in, her lips hovering so close to his ear that when she spoke, he could feel their movement on the very edge of his skin. “There’s more where that came from, handsome.”

Then, to really top it all off with a cherry, she pressed a quick kiss against his cheek. It was far enough away from his mouth that it was chaste, could have been the move of some shy virginal type harboring her little school girl crush on him, but he knew better. He knew so much better when it came to her.

He watched her waltz off back towards their set in something close to shock, leaving him choking in her dust. As if she could read his mind, she called out without looking back, “Get your mind outta the gutter!”

 _Yeah,_ he thought to himself. _Game on._

And he already knew his next (albeit pant-less) move.

**Author's Note:**

>  **ADDENDUM**  
>  _2019_  
> 
> 
> “Good one, Johansson.”
> 
> Scarlett's eyebrows furrowed together, glancing up from her coffee cup at the man standing over her chair. "What?" she asked. "What was a good one?"
> 
> Jeremy scowled at her. "Me, the stripper? Really?" Like the fucking sun, a smile broke out from behind the clouds and dazzled on her face, mischief glittering in her eyes. _Fucking minx._
> 
> "I have no idea what you're talking about," she replied a little too stiffly to be serious before preoccupying her lips with a long swig of her coffee and swallowing down her amusement with what she's done. "I was asked a question in one of those _guess that cast member_ games we've been subject to for the last eight years. He asked who I thought was a stripper. I guessed you. Just playing along."
> 
> "Playing along, huh?" She didn't respond, just quirked an eyebrow up at him in the face of her nonchalance. The smirk he pulled out of his arsenal was wicked, and a small part of him hoped she could physically feel him dragging that same old match over her bones and lighting it once again. "Game on, baby. Game on."


End file.
